Susan was waiting at the newsstand. She glanced up at the clock a few inches to the upper right of it; Peter should have been back by now. What was keeping him? Sighing to herself, she picked up a magazine and flipped through it in a half-interested manner. Maugrim sat at her side, sniffing or yawning occasionally. In public, he wasn't supposed to talk; usually, this vexed him terribly, but right then it wasn't bothering him too much, since he didn't have anything really to say at the moment.

"Hallo," said a friendly (perhaps too friendly, thought Susan and Maugrim) voice. "That's a nice dog." A young man who appeared to be around her age with short, curly hair and a pair of unfortunate-looking, round, wire-rim spectacles on his face popped up at her side.

"Thanks," said Susan hastily, suddenly much more intent-and keen-on her magazine than she had been before the man had shown up.

"I like animals, but they don't let me or my roommate keep them at the flat-it was part of the lease."

"Uh-huh." She didn't even glance up, turning a page.

"So is he part wolf or something?"

What was it Peter had called Maugrim before? It would be best to keep their story as straight and simple as possible; but Susan couldn't remember what kind of dog her husband had said her dæmon was. It started with an A, she could recall that much at least.

"He's just a dog, I think." She shrugged her shoulders, keeping her tone demure and vague.

"Ah," said the young man. Then, "So, haven't I seen you around here before?"

"This is a public station;" Susan said, rather too harshly, "tons of people come here every day."

"I just meant…"

Maugrim yawned and, reaching up, scratched at one of his ears with his left hind-paw.

"What's your name?" the man tried, still attempting to keep a conversation going, indifferent, it seemed, to Susan's apparent disinterest in him.

"Phyllis," she lied. She reached up with her left hand to pull a lock of stray hair that had fallen out of the tight black knot she'd fixed the rest of it into behind her ear. At that moment he noticed the gold ring on her finger.

Ah, so the pretty woman with the handsome dog that looked like a wolf was named Phyllis. It was a nice name; but, irrelevant now, sadly, because she was married.

"Well, it was nice talking to you, Phyllis," he sighed, trying not to sound too disappointed.

Then there was a cry of, "Susan!"

Susan turned and saw, coming towards them, a tall, willowy girl with long, wild light brown hair that fell to her waist in sloppy ringlets. Across her shoulders rested a white ermine. Coming up behind her was Peter, and, behind him, someone else she couldn't quite make out yet-only that it was a man. But she quickly forgot about her husband and the man both at once when the girl came nearer still and she recognized her as her own half-sister.

"Lyra!"

Maugrim's ears pricked up, and-under his breath-he actually dared to breathe, "Pantalaimon!"

Seeing what was clearly an important reunion of some sort coming up, not even troubling to puzzle out why the girl had just called Phyllis 'Susan', the young man walked away.

Throwing her arms around her half-sister, Susan embraced her tightly. She and Lyra had never been very close; it had always been Ed who was kindest and nearest to, and most familiar with, and best understood, Lyra; but that didn't matter one bit at the moment. Both were delighted to see each other again.

"Peter," Susan began, grinning at him with shinnying eyes, "where did you find her?"

"Hello, Susan," the voice of the man behind him said.

Maugrim growled; he knew that voice, and he could sense Stelmaria's presence.

"What in God's name is he doing here?" Susan demanded, glaring at Lord Asriel and taking a step closer to Peter. It looked as if Maugrim desperately wanted to say something particularly nasty to Stelmaria, but he held his tongue for the continued sake of pretending he was a dumb animal, nothing more than an over-sized pet.

"Warm welcomes all around from the Pevensie family," Lord Asriel said dryly.

"Peter, I need to speak with you. Now." She wouldn't dignify Lord Asriel's presence-or his comment-with a reply.

"Excuse us," Peter said to Lyra and Asriel as he was pulled by the arm over to the other side of the newsstand.

"Peter, I refuse to have anything to do with that man." Susan folded her arms across her chest. Maugrim scowled over his broad, gray shoulder at Stelmaria.

"Su, look, we don't have to like him-or even trust him-but he might be our only chance."

"Only chance?"

"To get back and help Edmund and Lucy."

"Is he the one who got Lyra here?"

"No," answered Peter, "but he followed her; and he knows more about interworld travel than we do."

"Peter," she sighed, shaking her head vehemently, "at the risk of sounding like a complete nag, let me say this: have you forgotten who really opened the door in the Northern Lights?"

Peter blinked at her, looking unexplainably stunned for a moment. "I'm sorry," he said, shaking it off and coming back to himself. "You sounded almost exactly like Lucy for a moment there."

Susan managed a brief smile at the thought of Peter's little sister, Lyra's other half-sister, which quickly unfolded and turned right back down into a pout. "But seriously, we don't need Lord Asriel."

"You know we do," he responded gravely; he knew this was going to be hard, but it was the only way-sooner than she realized, Susan was likely to see it, too. "It was Aslan who did finally open the door; but Asriel knew about it-that it needed a lot of energy to be opened-before that."

"I don't want that man anywhere near Christian." She voiced her truest fears in the matter.

"Christian doesn't have a dæmon," Peter reminded her. "There's nothing for him to be pulled apart from."

"I don't care," she said flatly. "Lord Asriel is a complete scoundrel."

"And look," muttered Maugrim under a heavy breath so that only Susan-and maybe Peter if he was paying especially close attention to his wife's dæmon for some reason or other-could hear him and realize that he was talking; "they're spying on us."

He was correct; Lord Asriel hadn't moved, but his dæmon was only a few feet away from where they were trying to have a private conversation-eavesdropping, no doubt.

"He tried to kill me." Susan wondered if maybe Lord Asriel had hit Peter over the head with the back of his rifle or something, because, otherwise, she just couldn't see-or fathom-how he could even be thinking about letting that horrible man back into their lives.

From very nearly the moment they met, that dratted Lord Asriel had been a negative presence in her life. First, he an affair with her mother. Then, years later, when Susan was no longer a Coulter but a Pevensie, and pregnant, he'd jolly well kidnapped her and Maugrim, taken them to the Northern Lights without explanation, then tried to tear them apart.

He was a monster, and she would have nothing whatever to do with him.

Hearing the conversation through his dæmon, Lord Asriel approached them, saying, "Well, to be fair, Mrs. Pevensie, I wasn't necessarily trying to kill you. Your death would have merely been an unfortunate side-effect of what I was trying to accomplish."

She was momentarily tempted to call him a name which insinuated that his parents had never been married, but she held back…it wouldn't have been polite or lady-like to say that word. She thought it, gentle-minded though she usually was, she thought it all right-she just didn't say it.

"Ass," Peter muttered under his breath, reacting to what Lord Asriel had just said.

"What's in it for you?" Susan demanded, speaking to Asriel now in spite of her determination not to so much as address him. "If this is the only practical way for us to get where we're needed-letting you help us, I mean-as I'm starting to think, much as I hate it, and you, might be the case-why would you want to help us? After all you've done…"

"If you must know, Mrs. Pevensie, it's because I want to get back to that world, too."

"You?" she asked suspiciously. "Why?"

"Because, I mean to stand up to the Ruling Powers, not hide away vacationing in a parallel universe for no reason. Besides, about Dust; how the devil do you expect me to go back to the drawing board when the drawing board is in a completely different world?"

"You go back," Susan told him, an incredulous snort coming from Maugrim, "and you'll be killed for heresy."

"Which will be a blessing compared to what I'll do to you if you ever try to hurt my family again, Lord Asriel," Peter put in warningly.

Lord Asriel's gaze shifted over to his dæmon and she rolled her great cat-eyes, the soft, white velvet-like lids closing over their blue, tawny-flecked irises when she blinked afterwards.

"You're not afraid?" Lyra said, coming into the conversation now. She had to hand it to her father, if nothing else, he had guts.

"Afraid of what I'm going to put to ruin when I find Dust?" he scoffed patronizingly as if she were six and he was much too brilliant to be bothered by her childish awe.

Pan snuck at glance at Stelmaria, still fretful, but with a bit of Lyra's admiration for Lord Asriel missed in with his expression as well.

Susan stamped her foot. "Oh, if we've got to have him-beast that he is-do let's get out of the streets before somebody notices he has a snow-leopard at his side!"

They agreed to this and Peter, though it made him shudder when he thought about what he was doing and he had to keep telling himself not to think about it, that he must simply do it at once or he would lose his nerve, led Lord Asriel and his dæmon straight into his parent's home.

Lyra, who of course had come along, too, darted about the whole house-gaping at things excitedly. She jumped back when Pan accidentally turned on the radio and an announcer's voice came out.

It was also Lyra who was most interested in Christian. As the boy had been born dæmonless, he was of no use to Asriel, so the nobleman pretty much ignored Susan Pevensie's child. But his daughter was delighted with the little boy; she had never thought she liked babies-or toddlers-much, yet this one, she liked just fine. It was a little odd, Christian having no dæmon, and if Lyra wasn't used to that because of Peter and because of seeing that those boys in the subway hadn't got any-it might have made her nervous. Pan looked a bit uncomfortable, but he got over it-he, too, being used to such sights because of Peter.

Unfortunately, much as she came to like him, Christian did not make quite the best over-all impression on Lyra he might have. Somehow or other he got ahold of her alethiometer and pulled it out of her pocket. Susan had to come and get him to take it out of his mouth so that she could clean it off and give it back to Lyra.

Lord Asriel would be pleased with nothing. He disliked the furniture and the food, as well as nearly everything else. The household bookcase in the corner of the downstairs hallway, he declared full of rubbish that would be of no use to them. When Peter explained that some of those tomes just so happened to be family heirlooms, Lord Asriel said, in a very condensing manner, that it figured.

Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie hadn't been home when their son had brought in two more people from that other world, so when they arrived home to find a rather alarming-looking man sleeping in their living room with a snow-leopard at his feet-also asleep-but making this great rumble, a kind of snore, it seemed, they were a bit shaken up.

Thankfully, Lyra was a nicer surprise for them. Peter had given her Lucy's old room for the time being, and she was curled up half-way under the covers, Pantalaimon snuggled under one of her dangling arms hanging over the side of the bed. She looked sweet, especially because she didn't talk in her sleep and so one couldn't hear her rather colorful abuse of the English language or her disregard for grammar, and little snowy-coloured Pan, dozing so intently, looked as gentle and harmless as Stelmaria did dangerous.

There were a few passing tears in Mrs. Pevensie's eyes at the sight a girl-whatever her age-with a smallish dæmon asleep in her daughter's old room. Helen and Mr. Pevensie missed Lucy far more than they let on. Susan was, of course, some comfort to them, but, understandably, much as they loved their daughter-in-law and her Maugrim, it wasn't the same.

Late that night-nearly early morning-Susan woke with a start because she heard crying. Lord Asriel heard it, too, but he just rolled over and pulled the knitted blanket Maugrim had begrudgingly tossed to Stelmaria for her master's use over his head.

"Peter," Susan moaned, thinking it was Christian even though it didn't really sound like him; she was too tired to tell the difference. "It's your turn."

"Checkmate," muttered Peter, having a dream about playing chess. "I win."

"Peter!" Susan kicked at whichever one of his legs was closest to her side of the bed.

"Ow!" he grunted. "Stop kicking me."

"Go check on Christian."

"Me? Why me?"

"Just go. It's your turn. I checked on him the last time something was wrong and it took me three hours to convince him that there weren't actually monsters living in his closet."

"Didn't we just check on him five hours ago?" murmured Peter, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"Peter, I mean it." She glowered at him.

Peter cracked one eye open to see his wife looking cross and her dæmon's ears flat back, pin-straight. It was a losing battle.

"All right, Su," yawned Peter at last, climbing out of bed. "I'm going."

"Good."

"Oh, and Peter?"

"Yes?"

"Bring us back a glass of water since you're up," Maugrim told him, snuggling back down on the foot of the bed.

"Well of all the blasted nerve-" Peter began. Then he thought better of it, shook his head, pulled his dressing-gown over his night-shirt and went out into the hallway. "Why is it always me?" he sighed, rather over-dramatically, to himself.

It was not, it turned out, Christian crying at all. The little black-haired boy was sleeping sound as anything when Peter peeked into the nursery room. The real source of the sobs was Lyra, and she had steadied them by this point.

"Lyra?" Peter peeked into Lucy's old room. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine," she said, her voice shaky and slightly stuffy the way a person's voice is when they've had a good cry and then are trying to hide it.

He didn't believe her. Quickly, before she could tell him to go away, he flicked on the lights.

"Hey!" she protested, sitting up straight in the bed, pouting.

"What's wrong?"

"Nohfin'."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah."

"Lyra, what happened?"

"We had a bad dream, is all," Pan blurted out.

"Hush, Pan," Lyra told her dæmon in a low, whisper-hiss.

But Peter had already heard. "Oh."

"We dreamed that we were twelve again, and Pan was a pole cat," Lyra confessed, still half-holding onto the pretense of being sullen. "And we was with Iorek when he took us to that house in the snowy valley, see? You remember, where I found Roger without his dæmon."

Peter nodded. He remembered all right, that had been pretty traumatic for everyone-but mostly for Lyra, as Roger was her best friend.

"Wells, in my dream I'm a-walking," Lyra went on, "and I says, 'Pan come on…' cause Pantalaimon doesn't want to go in and I dunno why…then he runs the other way…and I feel this awful tug, like we're going to split apart-only we don't…he comes back. Then we go in anyways and we sees a boy all covered up by a blanket…and Pan can't sense any dæmon…and I know it's going to be Roger, right? So I'm trembling like anythin' and then the blanket pulls back, but it's not Roger, it's Billy Costa-Ma Costa's son. And Ratter's missing. He looks and me, all pale like, and I look back at him. Then I scream-and Pan screams, too."

"I can see why that would be upsetting," said Peter sympathetically.

"I'm fine, though." Lyra glanced over at the door. "Don't tell Uncle As-I mean, my father-I was crying, though, okay?"

"I really don't have motivation to tell him anything I don't have to, Lyra," Peter assured her. "You think you're going to be able to go back to sleep now?"

"Yeah." She stroked Pan's soft white fur with the side of her right hand. "Night, Peter."

"Night." He hesitated at the lights. "You want me to leave them on for you?"

"I ain't scared of the dark," she said, a bit indignantly.

He flicked them off. "That's all right, then."

"Peter?"

"Yes, Lyra?"

A muffled, "Thanks again" came from under the bedcovers.

"You're welcome."

AN: Please review.